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Monday, 29 May 2017

Foreword

We are free. We are free to
reinvent the world as we like. Most people have not realized it yet. However, even
though the US military budget exceeds that of all other countries in the world
together, the era of American supremacy has ended. Now that the USA needs to
focus on its own domestic affairs, and we are left free to make our own choices.
The people of the world can finally figure out their own ways of living – now
that they have to. It is no longer necessary to wait until the USA and its
strategic think tanks tell the rest of the world what to do.

This is actually a historic opportunity
– for us, for the world, and for America, too. The America-dominated era had
industrialized the world, and created previously unseen levels of luxury. It also
created a financial industry to make it happen, and a digital infrastructure to
watch and control the world. Yet, it has failed to solve the existential
challenges of our planet: climate change, environmental destruction, resource
depletion. This lack of sustainability is causing wars, mass migration, and a
future heading for disaster. A new approach – one that brings people and nature
in balance – is urgently needed.

It turns out that the reinvention
of the world has already started. The digital revolution provides us the tools
for a new historical age. Within the space of a few years, we have seen many
new technologies, ranging from cloud computing to Big Data, from Artificial
Intelligence (AI) to cognitive computing to robotics, from the Internet of
Things to Blockchain technology, from Virtual Reality to 3D printing. Now is
the perfect storm. All products, services, and business models can be digitally
reinvented – and it is happening right now.

The world’s attention has turned
to Google’s self-driving cars, Tesla’s electrical cars, and Uber’s transport as
a service. While Germany, once famous for its car industry, has plagued by the diesel
emission scandals. Suddenly, new players (such as Uber and Tesla) and outsiders
(such as Google when it comes to cars) are invading well-established sectors of
economy. And this is just the beginning...

The company AirBnb, even though
it does not own any hotels, now sells the most overnight stays in the world. Bitcoin
has reinvented money, and banks have started to worry about their future. 3D
printers can now build entire houses in a single day for just 10,000 Dollars,
and a 57-storey skyscraper has been
built in just 3 weeks. This is a revolution!

The digital revolution is also
behind a new wave of automation – and it is bigger than any such wave before.
Artificial intelligence systems can now read text, talk, and translate
languages in real-time. They can recognize patterns and contents of pictures.
They can learn anything that works according to rules or is repetitive. AI
systems can therefore potentially take over anything from to administration of
medical diagnoses, to jurisdiction. AI technology threatens not only
low-skilled labour, but also white-collar jobs.

It becomes increasingly clear
that no sector of economy will stay the same, and all institutions of society
will change – without exception and within a very short time. For Europe, this
is a particular concern, because the leading hardware, software, and data
companies (with very few exceptions) are located in other continents. Even
though “industry 4.0” seems to be successful in creating automated solutions
for industrial production – do you know the names of the leading companies?.

This is probably a side effect of
globalization as we know it. We thought that we do not have to excel in every
single technology, and that every country would specialise in producing what it
is best in, and buy the other technologies elsewhere. However, in the case of
digital technologies, this was obviously a mistake. Now, we depend on hardware,
software, and data we can’t trust anymore. As we will later see, the
sovereignty of people, companies and countries is seriously under threat.

To date, it appears that Europe
lacks a coherent digital strategy. We have a digital single market, but what
are the products and services? Even if Europe would now manage to mobilize the
capital, the patents, the technologies and labour force to generate the same
growth rate as the Silicon Valley – this backlog would grow further and
increasingly faster, because of the exponentially accelerating nature of the
digital sector. This in principle would apply, if we continue the same
digitization strategy.

However, there are alternatives. One
approach that promises to produce faster than exponential growth is combinatorial
innovation. This would be based on openness, and require sufficient
interoperability based on a reciprocity principle in order not to be exploited.
Such an approach would produce a participatory information and innovation
ecosystem, in which everyone could benefit from.

The possibilities of the digital
realm are unlimited, because the digital world is non-material in nature. This
is a game-changer. If we understand and use this well, we can live in a world
of sustainability, prosperity and peace. We could be world leaders in the
creation of this new age – a new historical era! So, what are we waiting for?

Sunday, 21 May 2017

The world is faced with existential threats. The financial crisis of 2007-8 and its consequences still endanger the stability of Europe and the world economy. Resource shortages are imminent. Climate change may wipe out one sixth of all species. Terror, wars, and mass migration create increasing challenges. All of this results from our lack of sustainability. To manage scarce resources and endangered people, powerful global information systems have been built, based on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. But at the same time, cybercrime and other misuse of Information and Communication Technologies are exploding. The before mentioned problems are still largely unsolved, and automation is expected to claim a large amount of jobs within just a few years. The digital transformation of our society progresses at full steam.

This situation inspired the FuturICT initiative back in 2010. The initiative called for a major, flagship-size effort to address these challenges by unleashing the full potential of Information and Communication Technologies. At that time, it became clear that emerging fields such as Data Science, Computational Social Science and Global Systems Science would offer promising new approaches to the above problems. However, the solutions at that time were still vague. This has changed, and that is why a FuturICT 2.0 project is timely. As Albert Einstein stressed, problems cannot be solved within the prevailing paradigm that created them. In fact, the World Economic Forum has identified 10 key global challenges, which cannot be addressed with conventional means including today's Big Data approaches, which imply problems such as over-fitting and mistaking correlations for causality. Therefore, disruptive innovations are needed. FuturICT 2.0 offers such disruptive innovations, which addresses the root of the above problems: lack of sustainability. The combination of the Internet of Things with Blockchain Technology and Complexity Science creates an entirely new opportunity to address our challenges. We discuss this under the label "finance 4.0", which stands for a multi-dimensional incentive system to manage complex systems and promote a circular and sharing economy that would allow to create a high quality of life for more people with less resources. The finance 4.0 system is liberal, democratic, pluralistic, participatory, social and ecological. It makes use of the unlimited, immaterial nature of information, boosts combinatorial innovation and creates opportunities for all, by fostering an open and participatory information, innovation, production and service ecosystem. It realizes that our current success principles of globalization, optimization, regulation and administration have served us well, but have also reached their limits. For this reason, FuturICT 2.0 explores the potentials of complementary success principles such as co-creation, co-evolution, collective intelligence, self-organization, and self-regulation. Information and communication systems, which empower everyone to take better decisions, to be more creative and innovative, and to coordinate and cooperate with others, would lead to better business models, products and services, smarter cities and smarter societies. In other words, the combination of smart technologies with smart citizens will be the success formula for the future. Our work on governance 4.0 and on the open and participatory Nervousnet platform to create data for all by involving citizens are heading exactly in this direction. The subjects that FuturICT 2.0 addresses are critical and urgent. The project will bring together and enlarge the communities of social (qualitative and quantitative), computational and complexity scientists, foster inter-, multi-, and trans-disciplinary collaboration and exchange - and pave the way for a scientific and organizational framework for the emerging digital economy and society. On an organizational level, we will apply the instrument of jointly-supervised ICTSS projects in addition to the traditional workshops, exchanges, and meetings. On a technological level, we will bring together Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Agent-based Simulation, Internet of Things, Blockchain Technology, and Complexity Science, and assess the implications from a social science and systemic perspective. On a methodological level, we will combine mathematical modeling with massive computer simulations, data science, and large-scale experimental approaches, including laboratory and web experiments, crowd sourcing and citizen science, virtual and augmented reality, and multi-player online games. They are important building blocks of a new global ICT system and future society. Addressing these topics together will finally allow the global ICT system to adapt to social and cultural needs, react to unforeseen events and make our society more resilient. By putting together key partners with a strong involvement of industry and junior scientists from various complementary fields, we expect to make significant progress towards the ultimate goal of the FuturICT 2.0 initiative: to find a path towards understanding and managing complex, global, socially interactive systems, with a focus on sustainability, resilience, cooperation, and value creation.

FuturICT Hubs

Followers

FET Flagship Initiative

The activities leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 284709 - project 'FuturICT', a Coordination and Support Action in the Information and Communication Technologies activity area